editor's voice

1. Purchase a voluntary subscription.

The Voice is a free, grassroots publication facing the financial challenge of the recession. In 2009, many community members helped keep the Voice going by making a contribution to the operating budget. We are incredibly grateful for the generosity of the community.

Please consider donating to the Voice this year so that we can continue to publish. To contribute, visit www.takoma.com/fov.html or use US mail: 7040 Carroll Ave., Takoma Park, MD 20912.

Questions: call 301-891-6744 or e-mail editor@takoma.com.


2. Patronize our advertisers and let them know that you saw their ad in the Voice.

Most of our advertisers are small businesses like us. When you spend your money with them, more of your dollar stays right here in the community.


3. Send us your story ideas.

We want to know what stories you would like to see in the Voice. Would you like to see more profiles? More county news? More investigative journalism? Send us your story ideas and other feedback so that we can make this the best Voice possible. Let us know what we are doing wrong. But also let us know what we are doing right. Send your ideas to editor@takoma.com.


4. Submit photos. Consider writing an article.

We try to make it to every community event, but obviously we cannot be everywhere at once. Surprisingly, the core Voice staff is comprised of only two individuals. We rely upon volunteers and journalism students to generate the material for each issue. If you could like to be one of our citizen journalists, please contact us at 301-891-6744 or editor@takoma.com.


5. Volunteer to share your expertise.

We can always use some help with the nuts and bolts of publishing this community newspaper. We are in particular need of proofreaders, Web 2.0 experts, salespeople, and deliveryfolks. Let us know if you have skills that would help us jump the hurdles of running an underfunded publication.


We are committed to making this the best year yet for the Voice. Please consider being a part of that.

We love living here, and we love providing the community with a Voice.

Thank you.

Eric Bond
Editor

editor@takoma.com
301-891-6744

Or: "Go West, young man, and grow bored with the country"

by Eric Bond • 

Growing up, our family spent many a July 4 on the road. Both of our parents were the grandchildren of Mormon immigrants and felt the pull of Rocky Mountain Zion. Boredom quickly descended upon my three siblings and me as we motored toward the promised land. The monotony was tinged with both guilt and relief as we contemplated the pioneers sluggishly pulling handcarts across the land that we were covering at 70 miles an hour.

My father's ancestors made it to Utah in style aboard the Union Pacific, but that didn't stop him from trying to match the ingenuity and ruggedness of the pioneers. We traveled with a big canvas tent strapped to the roof and a guide to KOA campgrounds in the glovebox. Dad believed in "manifold destiny," broiling hot dogs and hamburgers on the scorching exhaust manifold of our Plymouth station wagon. After our lunch had cooked on the engine for half an hour, Dad would pull over, pop the hood, and gingerly pull the meat from the aluminum foil. We would feast in the shade of a corn field, washing it down with A&W root beer.

To pass the time, we would count cows or sing. At my mother's request, we would start with church hymns. Before too long we would be belting out adulterated versions. It was probably to my mother's relief when we would turn to the Beatles. But even "Rocky Raccoon" gets a little old by the time you reach the black mountain hills of Dakota. We tried a Doors medley once, but that did not go over well with our audience in the front seat.

When all else failed, we would drop sandwich cookies (and anything else we could jettison) through a hole in the floor of our car, watching them bounce down Highway 50. For some reason, that activity always mesmerized. One year, we spent a good chunk of the trip supplementing an anthology of French fairy tales with uncouth and asinine marginalia. Now kids have video monitors in their cars. They can watch movies all day instead of staring out the window and watch America slowly transform from city to prairie to mountain. They don't have to come up with a shaggy dog story for each town they pass. They have no idea that boredom is the true mother of invention.





American dreams

Those trips were the fulfillment of an American dream made possible by the V-8 engine and cheap gasoline. America may be reaching the point at which a cash-strapped family cannot simply pile into a car and spend weeks on the road.

While it is logical to shed tears for the environmental destruction wrought by car culture, I am still grateful for my father's automotive wanderlust, which drove us down the ribbon of highway to New Mexico's diamond deserts, Nebraska's waving wheat fields, and Montana's icy mountains.

Now the glaciers that I hiked across as a teenager are melting. National parks are shrouded in smog. And family farms are long gone, replaced by agribusiness conglomerates, fattening Americans on high fructose corn syrup. Those trends were well underway back in the 1970s, but we were blissfully ignorant of them.
 
I miss that ignorance.

by Eric Bond •

On the eve of another Independence Day, I find myself looking back and realizing that my favorite July Fourths have all occurred since I moved to Takoma Park in 1989. The Takoma Park parade is one of the highlights of any year, exhibiting the grassroots in splendid style. We don't have giant balloons of cartoon characters or (many) corporate floats.

Instead, the kids from the local Scout troop show off their soapbox cars, perhaps a volunteer from the TPSS Food Co-op rolls a  giant watermelon through the streets, and The Morning Few reliably blast out a rock and roll jam. 

I don't recall any such expression of hometown independence when I was growing up. In fact, the only July 4 memory I can actually recall occurred in 1976 when my family lived in suburban Baltimore. That summer, Charm City did its best to whip up bicentennial fever. In an attempt to educate the public, fireplugs around the city were painted to portray various figures of the American Revolution. Nathan Hale only had one life to give for his country, but he had countless gallons of pressurized water to give to the fire-fighting effort.

On July 3, 1976, a 35 ton birthday cake replica of Fort McHenry, topped with 200 candles was to be towed around the harbor while a cannon sounded from the actual fort. Ed McMahon, Jose Feliciano, and Burl Ives were on hand to enliven the event, which was televised nationally. Finally, Baltimore was getting its due as the home of the national anthem. Unfortunately, technical difficulties plagued the extravaganza. Candles didn't light, cannons didn't fire, and a big cake in a dark harbor just doesn't come off as well as you might think.

The Baltimore City Council intended to pay for the bicentennial birthday celebration by selling slices of the famed confection. Unfortunately, the cake was ravaged by rats before any funds could be raised.

That sparkler fizzled.

On the other hand, Takoma Park delivers independence, neighborliness, and fun on a tight budget year after year.

I'll be out in the street tomorrow capturing the action. We'll have photos up on the Voice website as soon as possible.

In the meantime, check out last year's parade on the Voice website:
 
http://www.takoma.com/archives/photos/2008/07/4th_bond_slideshow/index.htm

On the evening of Monday, May 18, I was overwhelmed by the support that this community showed for the Voice when you gathered at Roscoe's to raise funds and spirits. My commitment to community journalism and the Voice was renewed by the outpouring.

Earlier this year, a group of Voice supporters--aware of our recession blues--began meeting over beers and burgers at the Olive Lounge to hatch a plan to help bolster their newspaper. They had become aware of the particular stress that we have felt over the past two years--as all local businesses struggle to stay in the black.

When the Friends of the Voice came to me with the idea of holding a fundraiser, I never expected that they would end up packing Roscoe's, the new restaurant directly below our office. I chalk up much of the success of this fundraiser to the persuasive powers and good karma of Howard Kohn, Diana Kohn, Seth Grimes, Sue Katz Miller, Jill Feasley, Elizabeth Brinkama, Jay Keller, and Roz Grigsby. We're not sure how many people were in attendance in total. But we do know that over 200 people signed up to support us.

(And I am well-aware of and grateful for the tremendous support I receive every month, most notably from my longtime Assistant Editor Julie Wiatt--but also from the many contributor, volunteers, and advertisers who keep this grassroots newspaper chugging along.)

While it has always been a monthly struggle to publish the Voice, running this humble publication over the past 16 years has been my dream job. (The Voice turns 21 this year.) We strive to be the Life Magazine of the community, keeping track of the many people and their stories which make this the place I call home.

I am motivated by tremendous affection for my two hometowns: Silver Spring is the location of my earliest memories, from the little brick house on Dublin Avenue to Dennis Avenue Elementary School and Giffords's ice cream shop. Takoma Park has been my home for the past 20 years, such a neighborly place that you can rarely walk down the street without running into a friend and an excuse to grab a cup of coffee.

My daughter is probably a little bit tired of hearing me tell her how lucky she is to live in a hometown. But she is lucky. Places like this have been disappearing for 50 years--places where your home was more than a place to park your car and pull down the blinds. And hometown ethos is what has made it such a joy to try to capture Takoma Park and Silver Spring in print, (and increasingly online).

Hometown spirit is worth preserving. I think that the current economic crisis is causing people across the United States and across the world to pause and consider life on a more elemental level. The gadgetry and big boxes are hollow next to good old fashioned neighborliness and personal connections that were on display at Roscoe's on May 18.

Thank you all.

-- Eric Bond, editor
Takoma Voice
Silver Spring Voice

Some events are both joyous and sobering--a call for celebration, but not for gloating. Armistice is one such event. As the guns fall silent, both parties enjoy relief from combat, but also contemplate the reconstruction and difficult reconciliation ahead. This is a bit of the feeling we have at the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States.

On the one hand we feel delirious relief and hope. Barack Obama has rekindled our democratic faith with his idealism, intelligence, and grace. We are all the more inspired by the response of our fellow citizens, choosing hope over fear.

Yet we Americans live among the rubble of a political system that has been heavily shelled. Decades of cynical culture wars, abuses of power, and perversions of the Constitution have left many of us suspicious of our fellow citizens  and worried about the future of this nation.

This is a moment that demands greatness. And Obama appears to have the fortitude for the job.

Of course, the election of Barack Obama does not magically transform that landscape. But in this calm, this armistice, we can take a breath and bask in the intangible, yet vital, rays of hope.

And there is no question about how profoundly this election of a son of Kenya and the American heartland reinforces our notion of American as an ideal, not a genetic marker.

It remains to be seen to what extent Barack Obama will transform government, but his serious, focused campaign certainly inspires us.  

A few days ago, on Election Day, veteran poll watchers at the Takoma Park Middle precinct marveled at voters who had never before waited this long, one hour, two hours, even longer, to cast a ballot. It was a United Nations kind of crowd that is too rare a sight  around here, despite all our rhetoric about local diversity.  The mood in the long line was casual and festive as if there was no other place one could possibly want to be on this particular day.

In a tactical sense these votes for President did not matter. An Obama victory in Maryland was a foregone conclusion. Up and down the line, though, strangers struck up conversations and repeated the same sentiment, "I want to be part of history."

The following morning a woman boarded a local bus and was overheard to say, "The country that I love loves me back!"

It was a bit of appreciative eloquence worthy of Obama himself, and it may best explain why, even before taking office, our next President is being compared to another skinny politician from Illinois who also occupied the White House at a time when there was a need for greatness.